If the optician had looked at the painting, he would have noticed that the boy looked like he had never been accosted by anything or anyone. If the optician had had eyes for anything other than Selma and me, he would have found the room to be very beautiful: the diarrhea-colored alarm clock that ticked too loudly, the large flower-patterned quilt, the fat lambs, the bronze bedside lamp with a frosted glass shade shaped like a gnome’s hat; the optician’s hidden love was so vast, he would have found all this to be sublime. But he only saw Selma and me, lying on her bed facing each other, my arm around her neck.

Selma looked at the optician. He nodded.

“Luisa,” she whispered, “you have to let go. It’s time.”

She took hold of my hands and they relaxed their grip. I turned onto my back without opening my eyes.

“Is everyone still here?” I asked.

Selma and the optician exchanged glances, and Selma invented the world for the second time.

“No, not everyone is still here. But the world is. The whole world minus one person.”

“Alaska isn’t big enough,” I said.

Selma and the optician exchanged glances again. The optician gave her a puzzled look and Selma formed a word silently with her lips, which the optician couldn’t understand. So she formed the word a second time, and because the optician still didn’t get it, she finally grimaced, forming the word with her entire face: pain. She looked so comical, the optician almost burst out laughing.

“You’re right,” Selma said. “Alaska isn’t nearly big enough.”

“He’s also not heavy enough,” I said. “What’s the heaviest animal in the world?”

“An elephant, I believe,” Selma answered, “but that wouldn’t be enough either.”

“We need ten elephants,” I said, and the optician cleared his throat.

“I beg your pardon, but that’s not correct,” he said. “The heaviest animal in the world is not the elephant, but the blue whale. A fully grown blue whale can weigh up to two hundred tons. There’s nothing heavier in the world.”

The optician leaned toward me. He was glad there was something he could explain at a moment when sound explanations were in short supply.

“A blue whale’s tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant, and a blue whale weighs fifty times as much as its own tongue. Just imagine.”

Selma looked at the optician. “How do you know that?” she whispered.

“No idea,” he whispered back.

“It sounds made-up,” whispered Selma, and the optician whispered, “But I believe it’s true.”

“If you only weigh fifty times as much as your tongue, then you’re pretty light,” I said.

“Not if you’re a blue whale,” Selma said.

“With a single breath, a blue whale could blow up two thousand balloons,” the optician said.

Selma gave him a look. He shrugged. “It’s true,” he said.